10th SS Panzer Division Frundsberg

The 10th SS Panzer Division Frundsberg was a German Waffen-SS armored division that was active from 2 January 1943 to 8 May 1945 during World War II. The division was named for Italian Wars mercenary commander Georg von Frundsberg, and it was mainly formed from conscripts. On the night of 29-39 March 1944, 1,200 of its soldiers were killed when its 13 troop trains were bombed by the Royal Air Force (acting on information from the French Resistance) at the Vaires rail junction in France, with the British planes bombing a train containing naval mines placed by the French. The division first saw action at Tarnopol on the Eastern Front in April 1944, and it later took part in the relief of the Kamenets-Podolsky Pocket. The Frundsberg division and the 9th SS Panzer Division Hohenstaufen were both sent to Normandy in June 1944 to counter the Allied landings, but the division suffered heavy losses and was forced to withdraw to Arnhem in the Netherlands to be reconstituted. The 10th and 9th SS Panzer Divisions formed the II SS Panzer Corps, and it fought in Alsace in January 1945 before fighting against the Red Army in Pomerania and Saxony. The division was encircled at the Battle of Halbe, and it broke out and retreated through Moritzburg, surrendering to the US Army at Teplice in Czechoslovakia at the end of the war on 8 May 1945.